THANK YOU COCAINE: Puma Gets PWND By Twitter In Epic Marketing Fail

Jake O'Donnell

12:01 pm, August 19th, 2014

Oh Puma. Puma Puma Puma Puma Puma…when will you learn that the internet is constantly trying to ruin everything? The massive apparel company asked fans to tweet at Puma-sponsored stars like Marco Reus and Radamel Falcao, who were expected to then tweet out handwritten messages in return.

The problem was, there was no oversight. No curation. This is what happened: (It says “Liverpoolarewank.”)

But some fans soon cottoned on to the fact that the replies, which came in the form of a digitally autographed picture with the hashtag #Fastergraph, were addressed to the Twitter usernames of the fans who tweeted their favourite footballers.

By temporarily changing their Twitter names, users could trick the automated system into sending out lewd messages for all the world to see.

Let this be a lesson: Hire someone to monitor your social media marketing campaigns (and don’t just throw an intern at it).